The battle continued to inflict great destruction on both sides. The humans were losing orbital defense platforms, orbital fortresses and mechs at a prodigious rate. The firepower of the enemy fleets was too great to prevent widespread losses. However, invaders could not accomplish all of this destruction without paying a heavy price themselves. Their phasefighters and warships succumbed to the massed attacks of the well-prepared defenders. The debris fields generated from this battle started to grow exponentially! Many pieces became affected by the complicated gravitic forces and started to spin in every direction. Some chunks even went on to collide against intact assets, causing their azure energy shields to take a pounding if they were still intact. Experience exclusive tales on freewebnovel The widespread destruction only raised the stakes of the battle. Both sides knew that the winner of this bout would be granted a golden opportunity to pick up a lot of high-value salvage. From expensive transphasic alloys to intact examples of high technology, the amount of profit the winner could harvest from the debris field was immense! As wealthy as the Rubarthan Pact may be, its resources were not unlimited. Being able to mitigate its own losses by reclaiming their wrecks would do much to ease its resource constraints. Being able to harvest all of those huge kilometer-long alien battleship wrecks would be even better! Ironically, the use of superior human-developed alloys made the modernized alien hulls even more valuable than before. Every battlefield victory represented a golden opportunity to salvage the lucrative wreckage and haul them to the rear where they could quickly be broken down into readily usable alloys. Even if their quality was mostly not enough to be used for the construction of medium or high-tier first-class multipurpose mechs, they were more than sufficient to build lots of Yellow Jackets or other cheaper machines. The transphasic metals recycled from alien warships could also be used to construct a lot of human warships after undergoing reprocessing! This gave the defenders a powerful reason why they needed to win this battle. Even if they had no understanding of economics or industrial policy, they could still understand the logic that having more high-quality metals resulted in more powerful stuff being built. The importance of maintaining control over the battlefield was also why so many people reacted with dismay when the greater phase whale made an appearance. If nobody was able to block the passage of the Divine Maw, the greater phase whale would be free to wreck the orbital defense network with his prodigious powers and force the Obsidian Orb to teleport away in a hurry! Right now, the masterwork superweapon lived up to its promise by severely constraining the options of the Divine Maw. Now that he had taken the initiative to shrink his true body, he no longer maintained an oppressive presence as before. He also wouldn’t be able to take full advantage of his immense physicality to batter the enemies in front of him in the simplest possible method. The Divine Supplicant currently served as his shield. The jureg greater phase lord had already taken the initiative to withdraw much of his spatial barrier and allow his vastly superior superdimensional shield to absorb most of the blows coming from the front. All of the attacks launched by orbital defenses, warships and mechs bounced away from the surface of the extraordinarily valuable shield as if it was a solid wall of reality. It looked so pristine and spotless that it gave the illusion that it could block damn near anything except for a blade that could cut straight through dimensions like the Heavensword! Although the outcome would likely be a waste, the red humans needed to know how much damage the superdimensional shield could take. A failure to break it or remove it from the Divine Supplicant’s possession would leave the Divine Maw free to rampage across the battlefield! Already, the greater phase whale had begun to interfere in the nearby duels by generating spatial storms and growing tentacles out of his weird and sickening organic raiment! "Stark." Saint Alo spoke up. "Launch your strongest attack onto the superdimensional shield. We need to gather more data, and your attack will reveal much about its defensive properties." "Understood." Saint Stark did not question her orders, knowing that it would not be welcome. She had previously been taking down warships, so much so that her intuition told her that the native aliens were paying a lot more attention to her Amaranto Mark III than before. The guest pilot did not let the possibility of retaliation interrupt her current assignment. It was easy for her to direct the Amaranto Mark III to continue to charge the Instrument of Vengeance but switch targets to the Divine Supplicant. The fanatically loyal jureg phase lord did not bother to move all that much. Even if his position made him vulnerable to flanking attacks from the side, he understood his role quite well. His only job was to stop the attacks launched by the Obsidian Orb from reaching the Divine Maw. He would rather allow his body to get burned rather than fail his mission! Given this information, it should not be too difficult for the Amaranto Mark III to inflict harm onto the Divine Supplicant. The ace marksman mech merely had to fly further away from the Obsidian Orb. The two then needed to coordinate their firepower so that their attacks struck the Divine Supplicant at the same time. While these phase lords possessed mysterious powers, Stark doubted that they could use the superdimensional shield to block attacks coming from two different directions. However, Saint Stark saw the futility in this action. Her resonance strength was still too low to pose a serious threat against a greater phase lord. While her Instrument of Vengeance was powerful enough to help with eroding the Divine Supplicant’s spatial barrier, if she wanted to make faster progress, she would have to work in cooperation with multiple ace mechs and other forms of support. This was too much of an investment! Besides, Saint Stark did not want to move too far away from the Obsidian Orb at the moment. She wanted to be close enough to provide support and take shelter from its formidable defenses when necessary. Staying close also enabled her to take advantage of its protection. As her Instrument of Vengeance finally reached full charge, she pulled the trigger as always. A blindingly white energy beam filled with resonance-empowered light surged from the muzzle and struck the superdimensional shield in an instant! By now, both allies and enemies had gotten used to the brightness of the Instrument of Vengeance’s shots. Their sensor systems had already adjusted to the glare so that they no longer generated a strong blinding effect. Even so, the Divine Supplicant still flinched when his superdimensional shield got struck by the Amaranto Mark III’s shot! Many sensors and scanners tried to observe what had changed. Compared to before, the exterior of the superdimensional shield showed off a shallow scorch mark. It appeared the reality-defying capabilities of true resonance was somewhat effective at damaging superdimensional matter, but not as much as everyone hoped. Saint Stark grew disappointed, but she quickly adjusted her mood. This was an expected outcome. Many analysts had already begun to form their initial conclusions. "The superdimensional shield is not showing any notable sign of change! It is not heating up due to accumulating thermal energy, and neither has it acquired any dents or cuts. It is as if the superdimensional shield is so much more massive than its presence in the material realm." "What are you saying!?" "The shield is much bigger than it looks! Imagine yourself attacking a solid piece of high-grade alloy that is as thick as one of our orbital fortresses. If you don’t have a weapon that can pierce through so much solid matter, then you have no chance of inflicting significant damage to it. It can deflect nearly every physical attack and absorb an enormous amount of thermal energy." "We can still break it down, right?" 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎 "Yes, but the Obsidian Orb will need to launch far too many shots at it to cause it to melt." The Stewards Siamesia made an immediate judgment based on the data. "I see two ways to deal with this problem. The riskier but more rewarding plan would be to focus on killing the lesser phase lords first. Eliminating three or four of them will free up more ace mechs, allowing them to attack the The Descent of Hushae’Rhua. With the help of Saint Davia Stark, it is possible for us to kill the greater phase lord and take possession of his Saint Piercer. One of our senior ace mechs should wield this superdimensional weapon and use it to wear down the superdimensional shield carried by the Divine Supplicant. If we are able to remove these obstacles, the Divine Maw will become vulnerable to the Obsidian Orb’s Star Caster. Killing him is a possibility so long as there are no unexpected variables on the battlefield." What a daring plan! Killing the enemy phase lords would do much to relieve the pressure in the Kayana System. Even if the Red Cabal was able to send more reinforcements, it shouldn’t be so easy to make up for the elimination of so many native gods in a short amount of time. Killing a greater phase lord armed with a Saint Piercer was much more meaningful. Everyone already figured out that the most efficient way to remove the superdimensional shield was to employ a superdimensional weapon themselves. Unfortunately, the Rubarthan Pact hardly managed to get their hands on superdimensional matter harvested from the Blue Dimension. Even if the Rubarthans paid a fortune to obtain limited samples of high-grade superdimensional matter, anything built from these precious materials would definitely be handed over to the god pilots and other bigshots. "The success of this plan hinges on our ability to kill the enemy phase lords quickly enough." One of the Rubarthan ace pilots judged. "This is unlikely to happen unless both the Obsidian Orb and the Amaranto go all-out in directing their firepower against them. We will need to go all-out in cooperating with each other." That placed a lot of responsibility on the Amaranto and other ace mechs with powerful offensive capabilities. "What is the second plan?" Saint Stark asked. "The alternative is to focus on containment when it comes to the enemy phase whale and phase lords. We try to make use of the least amount of ace mechs to hold the enemy champions back for a time. The Obsidian Orb, the Amaranto and any other assets we can spare should focus on the rapid elimination of the enemy armada. The phase lords are confident in assaulting our position because of the support of many warships. If we reduce their numbers rapidly enough, we will not only shake their morale, but also make them unable to push their offensive further. Our orbital defenses can redirect their firepower to bombard the phase lords, thereby forcing them to withdraw lest they want to see their spatial barriers disappear." This was the more cautious strategy of repelling an alien assault. The enemy warships were much easier to eliminate than the phase lords, but they were also much more numerous. This plan hinged on the successful containment of the Divine Maw and the other phase lords. That was difficult to accomplish with the amount of phase lords currently on hand. The firepower of the Obsidian Orb was also incredibly important in suppressing the alien champions. If it started to spit out plasma at enemy warships, the phase lords might be able to gain an advantage and inflict serious damage to an ace mech! The Rubarthan heroes rapidly discussed the plans. Time was of the essence, so they did not waste any words. Given the lack of confidence in their ability to deal with the Divine Maw in this first confrontation, the Stewards Siamesia made the more sensible decision. "Very well. We shall proceed according to the second plan." Saint Jeri Chevor stated. "Contain the phase leaders as much as possible. Do not take any unnecessary risks. Preserving Kayana VIII-E is more important. As long as we destroy enough of their warships, the aliens should retreat. This will buy us time to salvage the battlefield and make better preparations against the Divine Maw."